


Amongst The Stars

by heartshaped_inkstain



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshaped_inkstain/pseuds/heartshaped_inkstain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Indeed he was a failure as a bookman, unable to be distant like the stars any longer."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amongst The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This little drabble was written for Day 2's prompt of DGMweek on tumblr. I'm quite fond of it, so I decided to upload it on here. 
> 
> **Day 2** : Tabula rasa | “Blank slate” | Nature vs. _nurture_  
>  Keywords: Beginnings. Second chances. Empowerment. Forgiveness. Rebirth.  
>  _"We are influenced by the things around us" | "We are shaped by our experiences."_

* * *

It was a cloudless night, the stars dusting the dark blue sky glowing in a light so vibrant they appeared to be surreal. The courtyard was deserted, shapes and silhouettes of greenery dark shadows against a dark backdrop, yet the silence was tranquil instead of unsettling to the redhead sitting in one of the countless windows facing the inner yard. His back was settled against the frame, the windowsill serving as his seat, one leg outstretched and the other bent at the knee to offer a resting place for his arm. Seated comfortably like this, the young bookman in training allowed his gaze to wander and his thoughts to drift, calloused fingers absently toying with a worn playing card.

The stars… he had always enjoyed looking at the stars. Where that fascination came from, he couldn’t quite say, but it was there nonetheless, occasionally appeased on nights such as this one when he went to find a place to stargaze and enjoy the calm of nighttime.  This time, however, his thoughts easily strayed from the gleaming dots on the nightly canvas, circling around the kind of topics only the late hour would bring to the restless and the insomniacs.

Lavi caught himself thinking what a funny thing they were, those stars. Watching over everything from a great distance, never changing in spite of what happened in this world – they remained unfazed, quiet observers of human life, their distance impossible to bridge.

It was a lot like the way bookmen were supposed to be.

Impartial observer, chronicler of hidden history – how often had he heard his profession be described in such a way? He knew the exact number, but he could hardly bother to name it, ridiculously high as it was. Their tenet was ever present in his mind… or it at the very least had been until he had come to the Order. Now, he found himself forgetting his principles every so often, reacting on instinct rather than logic in situations that demanded quick decisions. He should remain levelheaded and listen to reason, but instead he had unknowingly allowed himself to be swayed by emotion and acted on impulse, oftentimes not making the decision that would have been the right one by all standards of his clan.

A soft sigh parted from his lips as his eye left the sky to rest upon the playing card between his fingers. It was the same card he had found on the blood-soaked floor of that clearing, the same card he had gotten lost staring at on deck of the ship to Edo. It was the same card he had carried in the inner pocket of his exorcist jacket ever since, and the same card Road had used as a means to prove her point to him. Yes, the Noah had realized his shortcomings before him – or maybe he had just been in denial for too long.

Indeed he was a failure as a bookman, unable to be distant like the stars any longer.

Too many people had influenced him throughout his life; he hardly remembered the time before he became Bookman’s apprentice, but the boy he was back then got shaped and shaped again by the man he called his mentor. Looking back at it now, he could easily say that while Bookman had been strict and distant with him for the most part, the old man had still become something akin to a warped version of a grandfather to him, and no matter what Bookman himself said in regards to this matter, he definitely cared for the boy underneath the masks – whoever that really was – at least a little.

After Bookman there had been Doug; the Finder had been different from most people he’d met until then, infinitely kind yet shockingly observant at the worst of times. Doug had seen through the redhead’s lies, even if that did not mean he had seen the truth beneath them; he had surprised him, in more ways than one. And then he had died – and Lavi himself had been the one to rid the world of the Akuma wearing his skin. It had been  _painful_  in a way it shouldn’t have been, but it seemed that instead of cementing his bitterness towards humankind and strengthening the bars of the cage around his heart, the incident had further weakened the stability of the walls he had put up to prevent himself from feeling like this.

He was a bookman, and a bookman had no need for a heart; What a guideline that was, sounding so simple yet proving so difficult.

Soft laughter fell from his lips, carried away by the nightly breeze and leaving him with a bitter taste in his mouth. Even if Lavi had not intended for it to happen, his heart had shown to have a mind of its own, and before he knew it he had been in far too deep to ever hope to do anything to reverse it. But truth be told – he didn’t want to. Not anymore.

When Allen had stepped into his life, his eyes just as piercing and his kindness just as boundless as Doug’s, it had hardly mattered that Lavi hadn’t intended to make the same mistake another time. No, he had become attached again with a frightening ease, and the younger teen along with everyone else at the Order had wormed his way into his heart, found a way to move past the bars of its prison and touched his core before Lavi had even so much as realized that he should probably stop them.

Allen, like a light in the darkness, had given him  _hope_  that maybe, just maybe, humanity wasn’t as damned as he believed it to be. That they weren’t all the same, that not all of them deserved his loathing, his bitter-tinged apathy. He had opened his eyes to the fact that there were people in this world who were worth saving, worth  _protecting_. He had made Lavi realize that the people who considered him a friend had somehow, secretly, crept up on his shackled heart and given it life, and that he had  _let_  them, welcomed them, all thoughts about distance and impartiality gone with the wind.

Allen had been the catalyst, he saw that now – and even if he tried, he couldn’t find it in him to feel even a shred of regret.

What had begun as a long, winding road of confusion had by now manifested into a path he never even should have considered walking, one where his next step could either meet even ground or send him dropping in a free fall with no safety net. Who knew what the future would bring? Lavi was an expert on the past, but by no means a fortune teller.

Unlike the stars above his head, Lavi mused as he twirled the tattered playing card in his fingers, he hadn’t been able to remain distant in the face of the world; but then again, he was right in the middle of it, wasn’t he? Even a bookman was forced to bow down to the limitations of humanity – he was no separate entity, as much as he used to long for that; he was one of them, as human as everyone else, and as such he was subject to emotions he couldn’t keep himself from feeling.

He was only human, influenced by the ones around him – always was and always would be, until the day he died. Perhaps – in all likelihood – the path he had chosen for himself would lead him towards destruction, and Lavi knew that the him from three years ago would have never made the same decision. But he had  _changed_ , he thought with a soft smile on his lips; he had changed and arrived at the conclusion that it was a good change.

With that knowledge, the redhead carefully returned the worn playing card to its place in the inner pocket of his jacket and got up. Arms rising above his head, the redhead stretched out tired limbs before making his way back inside without another look at the starry sky.

Because when it came down to it, he would rather find himself amongst his friends than amongst the stars.


End file.
